struggles

Got an email late yesterday. Well, me a bunch of other folks, I'm sure.
Sorry. None of your work will be traveling to Art Quilts Element next spring. 

Seems like such a long way off. All I can think about is what's happening here.
It sure makes all other endeavours look puny.

I found this scrap in with a load of socks. Looks like more B&W pieces will be in the works.

more code

The current WIP is a continuation of something that was started maybe three years ago, I haven't taken the time to dig through the archives here, but I know it was one of the pieces that I took to Kinkos and pulled color copies of on heavy weight paper. I'll have to revisit that. The prints come out beautiful in case you haven't tried it.

This stormy grey bit is actually the collar from a tuxedo shirt that I used for a table mopper in a dye session and then dismembered. It flapped around in the river basket like a broken wing for a long time, noisy, always surfacing. "Use me."

I think about the occasions or performances it must have witnessed. You just never know what clothes have been up to.

The older section keeps reminding me to loosen up and not be so literal. Then I study it and think that it needed more work too.

code lines

The new banner was just two pieces of cloth peeking out of the "save me" basket.

This piece occupied my hands this morning while the light was good and cats begging for attention weighed me down.

It's closing in on being done and I don't want it to be because then I'll have to start another. 

Starting is hard.

day and night

"Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.” 

― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

Karma VI

This has been hanging on the other, vertical design wall away from all the other chaos. I've decided that it needs more construction type work before I can call it finished. Could be that I'll stitch it right to a canvas if I can find one the right size.
It's 20x21.

Even as I am stitching with opulently colored fabric and threads my eye keeps being drawn to the vigor and violence of the black and white things in the room.

I loved saddle shoes back in the day. Would wear them again if I could find the right ones.  Waiting for the sunlight to come through the front windows to get back to this one.

overnight changes

It got cold overnight and I brought Mr. Wilson inside. The rest will get their frog/lizard check tomorrow and join him.

It was so nice out over the weekend that on Sunday I took the overflowing river basket to the park and staked out one of the new picnic tables with the intention of working on this piece.

As I started looking for a certain color thread, I pulled more and more tools, UFOs, bags of thread and miscellaneous crap from the basket and found a trio of stinkbugs lurking. One by one they were evicted and I spent an hour sorting and reorganizing. It needs a serious offload.

The stitching didn't happen until much later during a short Downton Abbey orgy. I find I can't just stitch. There has to be something else going on. A ballgame, a movie, an audiobook. I have to disconnect the brain from the hands otherwise I get bored and quit or bad stitching things happen from overthinking.